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Apple just isn't a threat. They fill a niche, and because of the strong OS-centrism the users who go with Apple there's just no wrestling them away, but they're also a selective breed. Anyone can use a Mac, but not just anyone wants to. It's still a centralized ideal in proprietary software.

F/OSS changes the game completely and if it were to succeed Microsoft just couldn't fight back, there's no way they'd survive selling mice, consoles and 'Office Productivity Software'. It would be the death of the software giant.

Proprietary software is restrictive, Free software is, well, free! It's so easy to spin proprietary software as evil and free software as good, but if free software were already the accepted norm, how could you possibly break it claiming proprietary software was good?

Microsoft and Apple compete with each other. GNU/Linux just slowly assimilates as necessary or as remotely useful. If anything, Microsoft should be supporting Apple's ass to keep afloat the competition they can pull the same rope with.

That is especially so in the context of what Ballmer was talking about. His point in the talk seemed to be that pirated Windows was (by far) their largest competitor, and the one they want to focus most on beating.

When looking at where else all those unlicensed users would go if they didn't become legal Windows users, Apple doesn't really come into it much. People with illegal copies of Windows would typically either be cheapskates or live in a developing country - neither of which are really Apples typical customer base. Linux on the other hand is better placed to pick them up if MS gets too heavy on them.

Yes, the iPhone and iPod are niches. The Zune is another product, but it failed to fill a niche largely because of the iPod but mostly because it's a piece of shit. The iPhone is indeed popular, but Windows Mobile plays a different role and provides significant competitive options. It also fills a niche.

The "YoTLD" is nonsense, Free Software doesn't have a turning point that can be suggested. Governments are mandating open source, countless consumer devices pick free pieces of software all the time, even if they don't always comply by the license they are released under, Microsoft not only acknowledges the existence of the idea of F/OSS but the actively combat it.

Free Software doesn't have to 'sell better', it doesn't have to be more popular to continue to exist. It just does, and it continues to improve and be used the world around. Free Software products will inevitably prevail over proprietary options because it is the moral and intelligent decision.

F/OSS won't take over the world, the world will take over it. The reason it can't be fought is because it doesn't exist, it's entirely abstract and supported cognitively. What Microsoft has pushes is their software as a physical item, the boundaries of which separated by licensing and legal agreements.

Consider how Microsoft is splitting hairs over virtualization, how they desperately try to redefine where the software starts and where it ends. Microsoft's power isn't in programming, it's in litigation, and their arguments are becoming less significant as people stop caring.

It's not just cost free, it's not just morally free, it's not just legally free, it's not just free to redistribute and free to modify, it's not just freedom... Free Software accepts the fact that ideas are impossible to solely possess, and dare I resort to anthropomorphism; Free Software has a free life all of its own.

F/OSS won't take over the world, the world will take over it. The reason it can't be fought is because it doesn't exist, it's entirely abstract and supported cognitively. What Microsoft has pushes is their software as a physical item, the boundaries of which separated by licensing and legal agreements.

So fighting FOSS is like fighting terrorism. FOSS is an idea, it's almost impossible to fight ideas. Microsoft probably sees FOSS on the same level as terrorism.

Yeah, but unless you REALLY know what you're doing, you risk locking yourself out of your computer and/or losing access to files.

For my part, I switched recently, and despite buying new hardware (I had to upgrade anyway), it's been an easy, smooth transition. The used computer I bought had Vista on it, and I installed Ubuntu 8.10 over it. I was surprised at how easy it was to install the OS and change settings. For wi-fi, all I had to do was plug in a USB adapter I had up and running on my previous computer and entire the password.

They've come a long way since three years ago when I... didn't get it to work out. Of course, I haven't yet tried to move over my previous computer's hard drives or critical files like email.

The real core of the threat is emerging markets, and this is where their "piracy is number 1, linux is number 2" thinking comes from.

There are hundreds of millions of people in India and China who will be getting enough income to purchase a computer or computer time in the next decade. Windows at $100 a pop is a much bigger deal to them than it is in the US, when that could be a full month's salary.

Almost all of the massive piracy statistics you here are coming from those areas. You can buy pirated copies of windows at normal shops for a dollar or two.

In fact, one could easily argue that pirated copies of windows are one of the largest barriers to Linux adoption as well.

These areas of the world hold the largest potential in this sort of field, where there is already large amounts of market saturation in western countries. And that's why they don't consider Apple a threat - it is very likely you will never see copies of mac os x being sold in shanghai for a buck each.

I wouldn't even consider the software piracy as a threat to Microsoft. The corporation benefits hugely from high level of piracy in emerging markets. Only because of pirates it is able to hold absolute monopoly in many countries without spending a penny for it.They get full regions of the earth which are dependant on Windows and have built Windows-only software ecosystems for free!They don't want to fight piracy -- people will still be able to buy XP or Vista for 1$. And pirated DVDs which are sold now are more like Linux distributions -- they have all the software you might need: MSO, Photoshop firewalls antiviruses etc. Very convenient and Linux is very hard pressed to top that offer. That way Microsofts monopoly will remain for years to come.

What the company really want is to milk those markets, to go after government institutions, companies and OEM's -- big targets which can be forced to pay (especially the governments).

MS could certainly bash Linux in commercials if they thought is was worth their money, but at this point it would just provide name recognition and credibility to mention Linux as competition in a commercial. I think they've only taken on Apple, because the PC vs. Mac commercials were making them look bad (They still don't attack Apple, lest more people realize they have a choice.) They'd much rather spend money on locking in their current customers and reducing unlicensed copies. Business as usual still pa

Could Microsoft be accounting for embedded distributions of Windows CE versus embedded Linux compiled into his numbers? I think that might give it an edge over Apple's. Ballmer's presentation is just citing "use." Which could be pretty accurate while Net Applications analysis is also accurate for desktop/notebook/server situations. Don't see a lot of explanation past the charts on either of these links.

Nope. I just think they estimated WORLDWIDE market share. Outside of the US, Apple doesn't sell. I live in a large city in Germany and there are exactly zero places selling Macs. In fact, I have never seen a Mac for real. People using Linux on their laptops can be sighted occasionally, however.

Of course they're worried! If Linux (and the rest of the open source projects) become even slightly common, Microsoft have lost. They can't buy Linux, they can't do deals with it. They don't seem to be able to out perform it either. Short of zapping every magnetic and (some how) optical media on the planet, Microsoft cannot kill an open source project of a large magnitude; there'll always be community members willing to take over where one was "bought" by Microsoft.

Sure it can! All that has to happen is for the GPL code copyright holders to be contacted and given a reasonable opportunity to object to the change. Things like this are accomplished by posting a legal statement of intent in a newspaper of record applicable to the scope in question.

After a reasonable opportunity to object to the license change, the license to the code can then be changed to the new license. If a copyright holder objects to the change, his/her code must be removed from the codebase with the changed license.

It's fairly simple, and license changes like this happen all the time. It's how the Linux kernel will be moved from GPL2 to GPL3 if/when that ever happens.

Now, a specific *copy* of the GPL-licensed code cannot be made proprietary. For example, if you have a legally obtained copy of some GPL software, and you live up to the terms of the GPL in your use of the code, the rights you get from the license for your copy of the code cannot be taken from you without your agreeing to the newer terms. And even if you accept the newer terms, the original, unmodified copy can still be considered to be usable under the original GPL terms by anybody ELSE who didn't agree to the newer terms.

But to be strictly truthful, GPL code *CAN* be (and often is!) made proprietary. I myself have found code snippets, libraries, and widgets, licensed under the GPL or similar licenses, that I wanted to use, and asked for permission from the original author to use the code under a less free license. Usually, the author has no objections to such requests. (I remember just 1 refusal)

Take a look at the original SSH vs OpenSSH for another example of open code becoming proprietary. Commercial SSH was originally a commercial software package with a "free" license, that was then later closed. Since the copyright holders behind the commercial SSH had no objection, this change was legal. OpenSSH today is a derivative work of the "free" licensed code before it was closed.

Linus owns the trademark, but only some of the copyrights - the code he wrote himself. Copyright in the rest of Linux (probably most of it nowadays) belongs to whoever wrote it. (Unless they assigned it to someone else.) So unless MS wants to buy out all the other contributors too, that billion dollars wouldn't get them very far.

It might work with smaller projects. But the kernel has had thousands of contributors, some of which won't sell for any price, some that can't be found anymore and some that are now dead. Just figuring out who holds the copyright over which parts of files patched by 50 different people over its existence would be a nightmare.

Then there are tricky questions. Such as, who owns the copyright for a line where the first contributor did the general concept, the second patched the off by one error, and the third added a check for the return value? How much must a block of code change to determine that the original author's code is now gone if it retains the functionality?

Yes, there are a magnitude many more contributors for the Linux kernel than there are for CUPS. My point was that Apple did the footwork to get the permission from the individual CUPS contributors. No one thought it would have been possible. Theoretically, Microsoft could do the same thing with the Linux kernel. But even then, it's not like a fork wouldn't be made at that point.

What if they offered Linus Torvalds a billion dollars for the trademark and the copyright to his code?

The Linux kernel is only a part of a GNU/Linux system. Almost everything, including the kernel, has been published under the GNU General Public License (cf. GNU [gnu.org]).

Linus Torvalds is still the figurehead of Linux kernel development, but even if Microsoft would manage to purchase all rights to the Linux kernel, that would have little impact, because the Linux kernel has already been published under the GPL, which makes it legal to modify it and keep it under the GPL forever, no matter if there also would be a proprietary version.

The GNU project (which contains all free Linux software including the Linux kernel) also develops their own Mach-based kernel, called "Hurd" (the OS would be called GNU/Hurd then).

Even if Microsoft would manage to purchase Richard Stallman, the head of GNU, it would have little impact on free software development, since all code that already exists can be forked away before any proprietary branches would emerge.

You're wrong, Apple is in the business to sell hardware. Apple's software exists to sell hardware. Final Cut Pro? That is sold to get studios to replace their high-end Avid editing stations with Macs. It all goes back to their hardware. Their latest release of Logic Pro even removed the dongle copy protection requirement, which tells you how little they care about software piracy as long as you're using Macs. iWork '09 requires little more than a serial number which you can enter into the downloadable trial version to unlock the full program.

If Apple was a hardware AND software company, their software would be available for Windows. iTunes doesn't count because it's free and exists to sell iPods. Are you sensing a theme yet?

Perhaps after the success of the switch adds Apple inched ahead of Linux on the desk top. But if you look over the last 15 years, I believe that there has been more Linux on the desktop than Apple OS's.

It hasn't been in anyone's interest to say that. I think that is even true of the Linux companies. For a long time they wanted to be under the radar under dogs. Perhaps because they didn't want a fight to the death with Microsoft.

Perhaps after the success of the switch adds Apple inched ahead of Linux on the desk top. But if you look over the last 15 years, I believe that there has been more Linux on the desktop than Apple OS's.

It hasn't been in anyone's interest to say that. I think that is even true of the Linux companies. For a long time they wanted to be under the radar under dogs. Perhaps because they didn't want a fight to the death with Microsoft.

This is an excellent observation and it lies at the heart of Linux's success. Anyone who fails to grasp this point is not even in the right ballgame.

In terms of economics, the most important difference between free and proprietary platforms is that free platforms do not require a large userbase in order to thrive. The number of skilled developers willing to work on Linux for free would remain very high even if Linux's userbase were to drastically shrink. (This is incidentally the main reason why Microsoft cannot win against Linux, at least not by any means available in the marketplace.)

By contrast, a proprietary platform requires a large userbase in order to even survive, since the only way for a proprietary platform to get developers is to pay them a salary, and salaries require money, which requires users. There are no volunteer developers who are even able, let alone willing, to contribute code to Microsoft Windows for free, because of the locked-in nature of the platform.

That's why proprietary vendors routinely inflate their usage numbers. Larger numbers are necessary in order to convince new users that the platform is worthy of adoption. If a proprietary platform does not have a lot of users, then it has no future, and rational users would not risk selecting that platform. That's why OS/2 died, and that's why Solaris (despite being made free recently) is about to die.

We thus have a situation where every vendor, other than the Linux vendors, has a huge economic incentive to inflate the reported size of their userbase. I don't necessarily mean illegal activity here; there are well known legal methods by which usage numbers can be inflated. For example, Microsoft counts every Vista OEM license as a Vista sale even if the user exercises downgrade rights to XP, and so on. In any case, it doesn't surprise me at all that the actual market share of Linux is far higher than what is being reported.

I'm sorry, but this is just really, really stupid. The crux of your post is that Linux is doing better than it is, but nobody knows because Linux companies are so goshdarn humble. Do you actually believe that? And you wrote it on a site that proclaims every year to be the year of Linux on the desktop?

The crux of my post is that "doing better" does not mean the same thing for Linux as it does for Windows or Apple.

You speak of the mythical Linux on the desktop. I honestly don't think Linux will ever achieve success in the desktop market. I'm not saying this out of elitism -- as far as I can tell, it is cold objective fact. Most Linux developers are not traditional desktop users. By this I mean that even though Linux developers do use the desktop, they are not representative of the average desktop use

There is more money in servers then there is clients, and it's an area that MS could still grow in. In this area Linux companies and traditional UNIX are competitors to MS whereas Apple is most decidedly not.

Actually there is far more money in clients than in servers. The profit margins on server software (and hardware) tend to be higher per sale, but in terms of both gross revenue and total profit clients wins hands down.

Heck, that's why Microsoft is the 800 pound gorilla of software. Windows makes truly ridiculous amounts of money, and the fact that Microsoft controls the end user experience at a very low level gives Microsoft a great deal of leverage.

Microsoft has a very profitable server software division, but its profits are barely a third of Microsoft's Client division, and MS Office (another piece of client software) generates nearly as much profit as Windows.

Let's not forget that Linux can be installed on any architecture. Apple may have a larger market share (depending on where you get your data from of course, lol), but they still have a limited compatibility range making them less viable.

Apple sells high end products. Apple's target audience is people who will pay more for aesthetics, and for a bottom liner on troubleshooting. Apple's less concerned with selling more products than selling more expensive products.
A single digit market share isn't a problem with this model, because Apple's skimming the cream off the market, and leaving PC manufacturers to compete on price with very slim margins.

No, what's there to think about? There are literally millions of companies who are doing well in a local market and don't matter on a global scale. There are easily hundreds, if not thousands of international corporations who do 90%+ of their business in the US and Europe.

Success and failure of a company shouldn't be measured by what some fanboys or freaks would wish for, but by the company goals. I don't think Apple has ever listed "market domination in Africa" on their list.

Not by a long shot. Netbooks run full desktop OSes and pretty much any desktop application available. I've not seen an iPod Touch come even close to what you can run on your desktop (regardless of whether its Mac OSX, Linux or Windows).

Dell desktop with Windows Vista (cheapest I could find in
Apple dekstop with OS X (cheapest I could find in
And one more thing:

1 year RHEL license for desktops: $80

So, in short, you do pay more to acquire Apple products, and there is no valid reason to deny that. You can try to claim that Apple products are better and therefore should cost more, but that is an entirely different argument.

The Net Applications survey seems to be centered on desktops and personal-use devices only, while Microsoft's graphic conceivably includes OS deployment across all kinds of devices (desktops, servers, network appliances, etc.).

If you take servers into account (especially web servers and certain network appliances), aggregated Linux installations could very well top aggregated Apple OS product installations.

Also note that the Net Applications survey segregates Macs (presumably including MacOS System 9 and ea

The day the manage to lock out piracy, a lot of that group will switch to Linux, not pay full prize full Windows licenses.

I can understand why they see Linux as a bigger threat. Linux is something completely different than Windows, MacOS is "just" another proprietary closed source company controlled desktop OS. These days, more and more people see the advantages of free sofware, and Microsoft will never be able to catch up with Linux on that one.

The very idea that there are more word processors than MS Word still blows the mind of people like, say, my grandmother.

The problem for MS is when there is another option out there in use, the chances of someone spending hundreds of dollars to switch from the tool that does the task to another high priced tool is pretty much nil. Those who switched are unlikely to switch back. Those who switched are likely to share the knowl

An operating system's installed base is not the same as the market share.

Market share is measurable because it's based on percentage of sales over a given period of time.

Installed base is difficult or impossible to measure, because it's the percentage share an operating system has over the entire population of computers. This means the market share of Macs and Linux machines is underestimated. Macs, because they last on average 2 years longer than Windows PC's. Linux, well, because hardly anybody pays for Linux since they can legally get it for free.

So, essentially, market share figures are highly inaccurate for estimated the installed base of any given operating system.

There is revenue market share and unit sales market share. Both are reported by companies such as Net Applications, but neither reflects the Linux installed base because neither includes copies of Ubuntu etc that were not sold.

Linux is a more fundamental threat than Apple. Apple, fundamentally, is another commercial vendor - one that can be dealt with, cajoled, threatened, and God forbid, even bought. Plus, Apple's focus is on hardware.

Linux cannot be dealt with in that fashion. The business model is different. Microsoft can pull a Novell or a Xandros deal, but that either 1) ends up helping those distros, or, more worryingly, 2) does nothing to fight the multiheaded hydra that Linux is. Add the fact that it cannot be bought or threatened with any serious lawsuits, its a major headache for Microsoft. All Microsoft can do, is to slow down its rate of adoption, through a combination of tactics, and that is what they have been doing for the past 10 years. This is also good for Linux, as it is giving the developers breathing time and space to improve the quality. In looks department, they are already comfortably ahead of anything Vista or Leopard throw up. The only missing pieces of the puzzle are UI workflow design (where Apple has a superior product) and apps (where Microsoft is ahead). The latter is changing, while the former, is IMO languishing a bit for Gnome, though KDE4 has made some notable improvements.

Microsoft's overall domination of the PC is currently not under threat, but Linux's success is forcing it to slash profit margins and do other things that it would rather not have do. The reason is that unlike Apple, Microsoft's userbase is full of people who want quality for a good price and don't want to be fooled into paying for pricy stuff they really do not need.

It is not the year of linux on the desktop yet. But its coming, and that is giving people in Redmond sleepless nights.

actually i think your missing the real point. its not really about who you can threaten.

Apple has a business model which literally cannot take a market majority. the day Apple hits 30% it can no longer be apple anymore. however Linux can go all out.

but even that is an aside in these times of recession people have a vested interest in their hardware. XP is getting long in tooth and vista was a flop if 7 doesn't pony up there will be a huge body of unsatisfied people who cannot afford to go buy a mac but *can* afford to download a Linux distro.

once Linux gets enough of a market foothold support for the platform snowballs. more drivers come out more people get linux etc etc.

The business model is different. Microsoft can pull a Novell or a Xandros deal, but that either 1) ends up helping those distros, or, more worryingly, 2) does nothing to fight the multiheaded hydra that Linux is. Add the fact that it cannot be bought or threatened with any serious lawsuits, its a major headache for Microsoft.

It's even a bit more fundamental than that. The core of the matter is that for "foundation" software, like operating systems or office suites, open source is the inevitable endgame.

In general, every widespread product drives gradually towards commoditization, where profit margins are driven to the lowest levels that capital sources will allow (any lower and capital flees to better ROI). But the marginal cost of software is zero; no capital is necessary to produce additional copies. For custom and niche software, there are too few people interested in the software to drive commoditization, so the software can be profit-generating. For software that is consumable content and differentiable, like games, there is opportunity for profit. But for stuff that everyone needs, and which provides few opportunities for differentiation, commoditization is the natural course.

Without the presence of open source in the market, the commodity price level would remain above zero, even once the software was "perfected" (meaning real differentiation is no longer possible), but if open source enters the game, as long as it is sufficiently functional that it is cheaper for some individuals or organizations to fix the ways it fails to meet their needs rather than buying commercial software that does, then the open source code will continue to improve, which increases the segment of the market that finds it acceptable, or nearly so. And remember that cost isn't just dollars. Ill effects of monoculture, perceptions of vendor lock-in and even just plain dislike -- even if irrational -- are all "costs" that some people apply to commercial software.

Over time, therefore, open source inevitably displaces commercial software in commoditized spaces. Microsoft and other software companies might kid themselves that they can continue innovating and adding value to their applications indefinitely, but in most cases they're wrong.

Whether they fully recognize this and are just delaying the inevitable, or whether they think they may be able to find a way, someday, to stave off the growth of Linux and OpenOffice, it doesn't surprise me at all that Microsoft recognizes Linux as a greater threat than Apple, because Apple isn't threatening to commoditize Microsoft's cash cows. On the contrary, Apple wants to find ways to push the price UP.
Linux and OpenOffice, however, are real, direct and apparently unstoppable threats to Microsoft's major revenue sources. Even if the Linux installed base were half of OS X's, they would still be wise to worry.

It's probably worthwhile to recall that Microsoft did not start out in the OS business. They were more interested in providing compilers. Gates didn't want to get into the OS business, either. But, IBM needed an OS, so Gates and Allen bought one.

Windows makes a fortune for Microsoft today, but lets assume that Linux completely undermined the Windows franchise. Seems to me Microsoft could offer something like.Net VMs as the "OS", selling tools and apps that require it to run. I'm not saying this will happ

OK so Apple's share of the worldwide computer shipments is 7-10 million units.

Funny thing is, there are other ships floating out there in them competitive waters Mr. Ballmer.Witness: iPod, iPhone, iTunes, and notably WebKit

I see a much lower percentage share of IE on sites I manage and barely a blip of traffic from Chrome with Firefox and then Safari taking places 2 & 3.

We don't need to discuss how iPod/iPhone has affected the landscape.

I'm more interested in how WebKit plays in the equation.Webkit is more than just plain old eyeballs, it's increasingly driving standards with support for CSS,/HTML specs, and, offline db support that make content development less dependent on proprietary tools like ActiveX plug-ins or Flash and more dependent on a web browser (typically not one from MSFT).

He's a cocky bastard and he just got lucky. Wonder if he'd do as well as Paul Allen outside of the MSFT play pen?

Not to mention that fleet sales are what propped up Detroit for a long time... now what's happening to them? I mention this because the ultra low cost and low cost devices are equivalent to fleet sales.

Listen, and understand. That linux is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

I revently took a course in Microsoft AD after having been a linux guy since RH 5. I couldnt in my wildest dreams think that Microsofts server products are such pile of manure that they are. The more i learn about Windows the more surprised i get that people stand for all the shortcomings, the bad usability, the lack of customer centric solutions and the costs.

In my mind there are just some small things that needs to be pieced in for Linux to be a really dangerous threat to Windows. Most of the things already exists for a Linux solution to completely replace a Microsoft centric network.

I have run Linux Terminal Servers, Linux Fileservers, Linux webservers, Novell, Windows various solutions and Novell Linux solutions. The only thing really needed is an easier and faster way of setting a Linux solution up. Novell and Windows is very hard and tedious to manage once setup but its really easy to get a minimal system up and running. Linux on the other hand is very hard to setup but very easy to manage on a daily basis.

If someone packages a solution where you can get a file, print, ldap and policy handling up and running without much fuss i think Linux would explode. Windows integration is from my view overrated, its much more important of making it easier to get up to speed with a pure linux network. Right now to much work is put into following Microsofts whims around with AD and whatnot instead of building a better solution on linux. A copy can only be so good as its original.

When I was a kid, I had an Apple IIgs and a DOS box. The Apple was a nice machine, but the DOS box felt a lot more like a computer. At the time, I had a full instruction manual for DOS. That manual included descriptions of all the COM and EXE files on the system, their switches and examples of how to use them. Apple lacks that raw computing experience. It is there in the terminal window, but you don't need to go there to use the OS. Linux on the other hand still has that natural and exposed underbelly that geek kids can get into. Some kids are curious and those kids like figuring out how things work. Those kids don't need mommy and daddy to shell out $1000 for a computer that runs OSX because they can get Linux for free and run it on a 486. Those kids are a lot more likely to go a school that will move toward open source as a cost saving measure, as opposed to a school that will come up with a lot of money to pay the Apple tax.

If I were Microsoft and I was focused on the next generation of geeks, I'd be scared shitless of Linux.

SO you believe that Ballmer must be stating only the facts, no agenda here?

What I've noticed from Ballmer over the years is a consistent pattern: what Ballmer perceives as a manageable threat, he mentions as a threat, but what he views as a huge threat he mocks and makes fun of.

Look at Open Source, or Macs, or the iPhone. When he's really threatened, he disrespects and mocks in order to appear especially confident. A sort of Tough Guy Reverse Psychology.

So yes, I know Linux partisans will say it's a desktop threat to MS with more potential because every Windows box is a potential Linux box, but I think Ballmer's "tell", as it were, is saying that he is scared by the Mac and in particular the fact that Apple has an obvious and coherent Mac-iPod-iPhone spectrum of products that can easily include netbooks, tablets, surfaces, or any other form-factor. And that Apple has basically managed an end run around Microsoft in the content realm (Music & Movies).

Write drivers for practically every piece of hardware in existence, or risk getting blamed for system instability caused by the hw vendor's outsourced drivers...

Continue to patch numerous holes in the operating system on an ongoing basis.

Continue to push for proprietary and closed standards in order to increase its market share.

Microsoft isn't good at any of these, yet they continue to pour money into Windows, in spite of the fact that it has very little value as a platform. People buy Windows for the familiar user interface (which MS actually got right), not for its security or stability. Why wouldn't Microsoft put its interface and API on top of a Linux kernel? They can still do the proprietary Windows thing, but let the Linux folks get the device drivers and system stability right.

I know some people here are anti-Microsoft, but if MS hoisted Windows onto Linux, you'd have many, many more drivers written for Linux, and the choice of OS would be practically moot. For the end user, it would come down to the choice between running a free WM such as KDE or GNOME, or paying some extra for the familiar Windows UI. And we could dispense with the incompatibilities with the two systems, and get the best of both worlds: the stability and security of Linux, with the ease of use and familiarity of Windows.

Two reasons: Apple is smaller because it requires specialist hardware that is fairly expensive. NOTE this does NOT mean I am claiming Apples are overpriced, just that you can't turn an obsolete PC into a perfectly fine linux server or desktop.

Second reason is that Apple is a straight competitor. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates/Steve Ballmer ain't enemies, they believe the same thing: Software should be paid for and the end user does NOT get to own the piece of software let alone use it in any way that they want to.

Linux on the other hand says "Here is all this great software, use it, don't pay for it and do with it what you want how you want to for as long as you want to." EEK!

Or to keep it simple, an Apple buyer might be persuaded to buy MS office for the Mac. A linux user is a far thougher sell and might even use something like OpenOffice or even worse Abiword (remember that OpenOffice is as complex as MSOffice but Abiword, that is so scary because it says "not only am I not going to pay for MSOffice but I don't even need all that it offers").

Apple is a competitor, Linux is an assault on the very principles that MS thinks should govern software.

Second reason is that Apple is a straight competitor. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates/Steve Ballmer ain't enemies, they believe the same thing: Software should be paid for and the end user does NOT get to own the piece of software let alone use it in any way that they want to.
Linux on the other hand says "Here is all this great software, use it, don't pay for it and do with it what you want how you want to for as long as you want to." EEK!

Do you know many Linux developers? Do you know where the average person is likely to get Linux? Linux ships pre-installed by for profit companies, just like OS X and Apple. Most Linux developers are not freaky hippy socialists, but are paid by commercial companies and enjoy spending those paychecks. Apple develops FOSS software and contributes their changes, just like most other companies that work in it. They don't just make FOSS but few major contributors do. Most profit from closed source software, hardw

AFAIK it's a Unix-like environment running on top of the Mach microkernel with a BSD-ish userland. The unix-like varnish over the microkernel is very modern, but I find the BSD userland rather primitive.

I am a unix (tru64, HPUX, sco, freebsd) admin as well as a linux admin (rhel5/centos5, debian/ubuntu) and prefer linux 10:1 to most unix though freebsd is very nice and a close second to debian for me.

linux != unix, linux > unix

though

freebsd = unix, freebsd > unix

OSX is a unix by heritage but it is a Desktop OS. Apple might try to present it as some sleek server unix but it is a Desktop OS sitting on unix, which is a different creature all together.

now Microsoft knows that big money is in the server market. a single server installation with SQL server is more profit than 15 desktop sales, and there is less rampant piracy in the server market.

Microsoft vs Apple is a battle on a single front. Apple doesnt have a strong flanking maneuver in its OSX server product.

Microsoft vs Linux is a battle on the server front that Microsoft is not winning and Linux is improving on the desktop front with improvements happening far faster than Microsoft could have anticipated or even keep pace with. They have never been able to deliver an updated desktop OS on a schedule anywhere near Apple or Linux.

Since OSX came out there have been 5 full releases and twice as many dot releases, each with some noticable and desirable improvement in function AND performance. Linux is such a multifaceted movement that every 6 months there is a dot release of the main components and hundreds of fixes and tweaks. Microsoft is 2 full releases and 3 service packs in that same timeframe.

I also admin a few Windows Servers (2 2k8 and 1 2k3) and they are reliable systems but the heavy lifting in our datacenter is done by linux and the rock solid legacy systems are unix. I have unix systems that are sitting on decade old hardware and have unlimited uptime only interupted by schedule maintenance.

Microsoft is right to fear the triple threat (remember the mobile market) from linux. Apple is such a niche player and seems satisfied with that.

To a developer, consultant or corporate decision maker, it says that certain standards can be relied on and many assumptions can be seen as a given, which removes a lot of headaches and initial barriers to adoption.

Essentially, it doesn't make the sale, but it does get you on the shortlist.

AFAIK it's a Unix-like environment running on top of the Mach microkernel with a BSD-ish userland.

Not to argue too much, but that might be understating it a slightly. According to everything I've ever read on the subject, it's certified Unix running on the Mach microkernel, with everything but the kernel derived largely from FreeBSD or NetBSD.

OS X uses Mach's CPU scheduling and memory management. The rest of the code in the kernel (the process model, the network stack, etc) is a combination of *BSD code, code developed in-house (like the IOKIt), and vendor-supplied code (like the video drivers from NVIDIA and ATI). Below the GUI, there's code from many, many projects, such as the shells, Python, Ruby, sendmail, and so on. The 3D graphics library is OpenGL, with in-house additions. The 2D graphics library is all Apple-developed code, except for some licensed implementations of pieces like the JPEG2000 decoder.

If you have the developer tools installed, have a look at/Developer/Documentation/Acknowledgements.rtf for a full list of the organizations from whom Apple has licensed code that they include in OS X.

AFAIK it's a Unix-like environment running on top of the Mach microkernel with a BSD-ish userland. The unix-like varnish over the microkernel is very modern, but I find the BSD userland rather primitive.

The GUI is good. Most Mac users never leave it.

I really don't know much about OSX, not as much as I'd like to.

Do you know whether it's POSIX-compliant? Is it proper to refer to it as a "Unix" or is it a "Unix clone" or "Unix-like system" like Linux? I'd also be interested in anything explaining why they went with a Mach microkernel and whether that has any non-negligible impact on performance (i.e. message-passing overhead, switching from kernel to userspace, etc). I'd appreciate anything you are able to explain since I'm honestly rather ignorant

Is it proper to refer to it as a "Unix" or is it a "Unix clone" or "Unix-like system" like Linux?OS X is a certified UNIX.

I'd also be interested in anything explaining why they went with a Mach microkernel and whether that has any non-negligible impact on performance (i.e. message-passing overhead, switching from kernel to userspace, etc). I'd appreciate anything you are able to explain since I'm honestly rather ignorant about OSX.

The message passing overhead is fairly high compared to other systems like Linux or other BSDs. Unlike monolithic kernels, the Mach based one that Darwin (The UNIX part of OS X) uses actually has to do a full context switch when one makes a system call. That can be slow, especially with TLB flushes and such.

Unlike monolithic kernels, the Mach based one that Darwin (The UNIX part of OS X) uses actually has to do a full context switch when one makes a system call.

If by "a full context switch" you mean "a context switch to a separate process", that's not the case. It's just a standard trap into the kernel, with the system call code executed on the kernel stack for the same thread that made the call; no address space switch is done.

I.e., it's not a "microkernel" of the sort where most if not all system services are performed in userland server processes - or even kernel-mode server processes. It would not look unfamiliar to people used to monolithic UN*X kernels.

POSIX is a subset of the Single UNIX Specification. Any system that is UNIX(tm) is also POSIX, but not every POSIX system is UNIX.

I'd also be interested in anything explaining why they went with a Mach microkernel and whether that has any non-negligible impact on performance

Because, in 1988, when they designed the system, Mach was the state of the art. NeXT used it and so did OSF/1 and a few other systems. Everything since then has been incremental improvements. There is almost no message-passing overhead in OS X because Mach is just used as a hardware abstraction layer, and most of the stuff runs in the BSD single server.

If you want to know more about how OS X works at a system level, Amit Singh has written an excellent book about it.

Your confusing subset with subclass. POSIX is a subset of UNIX features, so it is possible for an OS to implement that POSIX subset and still not implement all the other features that would make it a UNIX.

POSIX is *not* a subclass of UNIX, so all POSIX oses are not thereby UNIX oses.

By analogy, flight is a subset of the capabilities of birds, so it is possible for an animal to have flight capabilities and still not be a bird (bats, flying insects). "Animal with flight" is *not* a subset of "birds."

POSIX is a set of portable operating system standards. It defines a number of C interfaces to operating system functionality and a few other things (e.g. an executable named sh which interprets commands in a certain way). In recent versions POSIX and the SUS have been unified so that the SUS requires everything that POSIX requires, and also some things that only make sense for UNIX-like systems. This includes a larger set of basic commands, and a much richer set of operating system functions (e.g. variou

Of course not. Apple has a different model (Linux is GPL and Apple is closed source). Apple is still proprietary and paid-for while Linux can be shared freely. Just because they have similar origins from a software standpoint doesn't mean anything when you consider their market viability. They're completely different beasts in that respect.

Apple's Mac OS X is not entirely closed source. The GUI layer is, and some of the kernel drivers are closed source, but Apple has made the bulk of the kernel, pretty much all of the command line tools, and a whole much of their non-GUI frameworks available as open source (under either the sources original license or Apple's APSL).

In particular, the CoreFoundation framework is useful for cross platform networking and unicode string handling code.

To this discussion that has absolutely no relevance: linux is dangerous because attacking a single vendor is useless and because no single vendor needs to become 'huge' for linux to grow... and this is all a result of being free software

What is being pirated now is already lost (or never was there as a market anyhow). However, the customers of Microsoft that are paying licenses could switch to Linux like Munich did. That is a lost of existing revenues, thus the real threat.

I didn't think Linux would survive. I thought that Linux and its users would be slaughtered. It has, and it has grown and improved. I am honestly astounded at the level of advancement that Linux has made

Any proprietary platform with the kind of market share that Linux has would be dead by now. It happened to OS/2, it happened to the various proprietary Unices, and many others (BeOS etc.). Hell, even Apple would have died in the 90s had it not been saved [apple.com] by, ironically, Microsoft.

The difference is that a free platform can advance even with a very small userbase, as long as enough skilled volunteers are willing to contribute. Linux probably represents more total man-years of work than Windows, even tho